Shadowing Practice: Why Gen Z GAVE UP Having Kids - Learn English Speaking with Video

According to the CDC, U.S birth rates have now fallen to the lowest point in American history, with Gen Z having over 50% fewer kids than the 1950s.

But when child care costs more than rent in all 50 states, while 60% of Americans can't afford a minimal quality of life, it raises the question, how is Gen Z expected to have kids

when they're struggling to afford even the most basic costs of living?

Well, headlines frame the nation's declining birth rate as a shocking phenomenon driven by individual selfishness,

As if genuine care and investment has been given to any emerging generation over the last 40 years, the reality is that this trend has actually been building for over two centuries,

as economic conditions have continuously redefined the true cost of having children.

Throughout early industrialization, children were not viewed as a personal choice, but as an economic necessity tied directly to national power and household survival.

In a 1791 report, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton argued that children, who would otherwise be idle, could serve as a source of cheap labor,

helping build a domestic manufacturing base capable of competing with Great Britain.

Even in agricultural settings, children predominantly functioned as economic assets as they provided the necessary physical labor

while also serving as informal childcare for younger siblings.

We can see this ideology was also replicated in Europe with historians studying proto-industrial France, discovering that multiple sources of household income,

combined with the fact that children became profitable at an early age,

encouraged marriage and large families across both towns and rural areas as industries not only sustain larger populations,

but actively incentivize families to have more children as a means of surviving on minimal wages.

Even throughout the Gilded Age, with overall birth rates being cut practically in half through rapid urbanization, the underlying incentive for working-class families remained unchanged.

An analysis of Philadelphia households found that children contributed between 28 and 33 percent of total income in native-born two-parent families.

For Irish and German households, those figures rose as high as 46 and 35 percent,

forcing both parents and children to be largely opposed to child labor reforms not

because they supported exploitation but because they were financially dependent.

However, unlike the working-class households who were consistently fighting just to keep their heads above water,

middle and upper-class families had the luxury to prioritize the long-term outcomes of their children.

According to the study, Fertility Declined the United States,

by 1930, women married to men and in professional and managerial occupations had 18% fewer children than those married to farmers,

as larger families were increasingly viewed as an economic liability, as having fewer children allowed families to afford a better quality of life, often in the form of an improved education,

and sometimes even a college education, all in hopes to position them for upward mobility in an increasingly stratified society.

Suggesting real birth rate decline did not start with selfishness.

It began when children stopped being seen as economic assets.

And as we are once again seeing wealth inequality widen dramatically, we're unfortunately beginning to see elements of this dynamic re-emerge.

Between 2019 and 2023, the Department of Labor reported an 88% increase in overall child labor violations,

alongside a 31% rise in children employed in hazardous conditions, predominantly among lower-income and migrant households.

But for the majority of young people today, they're doing exactly what they were raised on.

If you can't afford to have kids, don't have them.

One of the most important aspects of being able to not only financially provide for oneself, but for a family, is having a job.

According to Revelio Labs, the average new hire was 42 years old in 2025.

Revelio chief economist Lisa Simon said years of economic and political uncertainty, along with the push to use artificial intelligence,

have led employers to place a higher value on experience

and become more risk-adverse in who they are hiring and willing to bet on in this labor market.

That so-called risk has resulted in the share of the workforce,

age 25 and younger, falling from 15% in 2022 to less than 9% today,

with hiring inflows for Gen Z dropping by nearly 50% in just the last three years.

And while some of you are already commenting that these lazy kids just need to get their hands dirty, well, many already are.

The question is whether you prioritize completely changing careers or starting a family without any form of job stability.

Now, traditionally, another way to overcome a failing job market was to go to college.

But unlike a minimum wage worker in 1989 who could pay an entire year of tuition, fees, and room at board with roughly 24 and a half hours of work a week,

A Gen Z student today would need to earn $21.27 an hour to do the same,

with nearly 40% of the entire American workforce earning less than $22 an hour.

And while Gen Z is on track to become the most educated generation in history, the outcome has been higher unemployment than those without degrees,

alongside increasing displacement, whether from the 37% of employers who say they would rather hire AI than a college graduate, or from large-scale H-1B replacement. And

when we compare paying an average of $526 a month in student

loans to the average child care cost sitting at around $1,100 a month,

or a monthly increase of $600 when adjusted for inflation compared to a parent in 1985.

We once again run into the same question.

Does Gen Z prioritize paying off student loans or starting a family, all without any form of job stability?

And while there are certainly those who have managed to find or create stable income, they are still running into rising healthcare costs, historic housing prices, and growing economic uncertainty,

all compounded by a dollar that is now worth roughly 86% less than what baby boomers entered adulthood with.

So when the median Gen Z income is sitting around $50,000, while it costs roughly $23,000 a year to raise a child,

it highlights that while Gen Z selfishness may make for a convenient headline, the reality of a declining birth rate has far more to

do with Gen Z living with the consequences of decades of self-serving decisions made by those in power.

However, even with economic conditions playing a massive role in child creation, another critical factor

is that people are willing to endure hardship when there is a shared belief that tomorrow would be better than today.

This is most clearly represented with the generation that is directly responsible for the baby boom.

Throughout the worst economic crisis in American history, birth rates dropped 26% between 1926 and 1936,

with the nation's fertility rate now falling to one of the lowest in the Western world, where families weren't just having fewer children,

they were rapidly abandoning the idea of family expansion altogether, with marriage rates decreasing 22% between 1929 and 1939.

Alongside this cultural shift in the nation's perspective on having children also emerged a growing disdain of capitalism.

Journalist John Chamberlain, who would later become a central figure in shaping 20th century American libertarianism, warned that the crisis was reshaping an entire generation's political and economic identity.

Chamberlain feared that the prolonged stagnation was creating a resentful generation, writing, young people have no memory of a good economy with plentiful opportunities.

They are a trapped generation that will explode.

He illustrated this volatility through the story of Joe Carnes, a young office boy who once identified as communist,

convinced this economic system is never going to spread out enough to take us all in, yet abandoned politics entirely after a modest promotion.

To Chamberlain, it proved that ideology was rarely the problem.

Opportunity was.

and without vocational training, night schools, domestic investment, and real job pipelines,

he argued, education is a weak bulwark for democracy if democracy can't deliver the goods in the form of jobs, a future, or just plain hope,

almost perfectly mirroring the reality that young Americans face today.

However, by the late 1930s, New Deal programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration provided jobs for millions of young men,

with federal investment in public infrastructure resulting in the construction of over 40,000 new schools, libraries, and hospitals between 1933 and 1939.

And even though the actual cost of raising children had not substantially decreased, nor had the depression massively improved, this renewed sense of optimism and societal investment,

alongside the rise of American mass media, introducing characters like Superman, offered the nation's youth a sense of hope that a better tomorrow was always possible,

resulting in both fertility and merit rates beginning to rise by the end of the decade,

with some historians and demographers even stating that the baby boom originally began prior to the war, proving that despite economic hardship,

even a fragile sense of optimism is enough for families to begin planning for the future.

And when you combine genuine domestic investment and amends post-war optimism alongside economic stability, such as low-interest home loans,

increased wages, pensions, employer-covered child care services, and health insurance, well, America's youth turned to family formation,

where between 1946 and 1964, over 76 million babies were born, creating what we now call the baby boom,

signaling that while governments across the world are doing everything they can to encourage Gen Z to have kids, the reality is that the internet has brought young people together all over the world.

And if Gen Z collectively views the future as an AI dystopian reality filled with immense wealth inequality, working till death, a lack of any ownership,

climate concerns, wars continuously on the horizon, domestic unrest, endless amounts of covered up filth from our leaders,

and a lack of any actual signs of real investment into the youth, then it once again poses a question.

Does Gen Z wait and do everything they can to try

and build up their own stability or go ahead and have children?

This question is especially relevant when the generation predominantly using the selfish label went through this very same reality.

As Cold War anxiety mounted, the 1980s saw a surge in research papers from psychologists and psychiatrists calling for intervention,

warning that entire generations were growing up with a sense of helplessness, with the Department of Psychology at Harvard University stating,

this fear of nuclear annihilation fostered a sense of having no future, an anxiety that persisted into adulthood,

influencing personal decisions like delaying marriage and creating a future generation.

In England, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences described a similar trend, writing, the threat of nuclear war involves an overwhelming threat to the individual's future,

that he or she will have no future, that there is no point in planning for marriage, children, or a career.

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And as the FDA approved the first oral contraceptive in 1960, for a generation coming of age amidst rising divorce rates,

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growing disillusionment, a cultural rejection of traditional societal norms, and the dismantling of the nuclear family, having children became deliberate and intentional,

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particularly as more young Americans began to question whether the future would be more prosperous than the past.

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And for the Gen X viewers out there, this is a reason why your generation is so small. So

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when you have researchers at the University of Sydney pointing to

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a growing Gen Z mental health crisis driven by economic insecurity and social instability.

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Gen Z in South Korea, referring to the country as Helljosen, a hellish, hopeless society.

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Gen Z in China, calling themselves rat people, a way to describe burnout, high unemployment, and disillusionment with the rat race.

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Gen Z across Europe, effectively facing the same struggles of a failing job market being blamed on laziness and entitlement.

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While in Canada, despite Gen Z saving more than any previous generation, they have effectively given up on home ownership.

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If the powers that be genuinely cared about a potential population collapse, then they must stop having these pointless discussions of selfishness and redirect attention to real change.

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And to just prove the impact of shared struggles all across the world, I'm 26 years old and I live in Austin, Texas.

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Because of this channel, I receive emails from people my age all over the world, from Brazil to Russia, telling me that while my content is American focused,

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they are still experiencing similar issues.

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So I just do not understand why our so-called leaders frame this birth rate collapse as some sort of unbelievably complex issue.

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If you cannot financially provide for yourself and you do not see hope on the horizon, you are not going to have kids.

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And until that is changed, this trend will continue.

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And something else that we need to put further emphasis on beyond the fact

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that teenage pregnancy is at like the lowest point ever in human history.

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I think that there are more 40-year-olds that are having kids than those that are teenagers.

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I would argue that that's something that we probably want to be seen as a society, but that does affect the birth rate.

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Beyond that, what I am finding is a lot of these individuals, whether it's on the internet or social media or in the news,

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so-called experts, are spending all of their time focusing on the birth rate collapse

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as if it's solely responsible for modern dating culture

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or the selfishness or the laziness or people just wanna go out and travel on vacation

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or a lot of these other things.

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Obviously, there's some validity to it, right?

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I think the dating pool sucks.

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What I think that we're missing here is the meat and potatoes of this argument.

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The economy is not working at least for the average person.

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I think it's probably working for whoever it's intended to work for, but not the average person, not the majority of individuals.

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And I got to say, when is anybody going to say that the way

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that society is functioning and that the direction that we're heading is not a great one?

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I just feel like so many of these so-called leaders or voices or different things like that

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are making careers out of talking about the seasoning on top of the meat and potatoes.

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It's like they don't actually know anything.

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I would say that you could fix a dating pool and a lot of these other issues if people made more money.

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If a house didn't cost, if my 600 square foot apartment didn't cost what it was that a mortgage payment was just a decade ago.

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I'm spending as, I'm almost spending $2,000 a month just on my rent and my health insurance.

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And the craziest thing is, is that for a lot of you watching that or watching this, that's fantastic.

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So then I'm going to add what another $1,100 a month for childcare.

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So I'm spending over $3,000 a month and I haven't even bought groceries yet or car insurance or, you know, all of these other things.

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It's, it's, it's unreal how, I think what I'm really just wanting to stress is that this birth rate collapse.

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Well, I would say for like humans to survive, I am a proponent for human survival.

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I think the way that it's been, I just don't think that the people that are discussing it actually, actually cared to see it better.

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Because if you did, you would talk about the obvious things.

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And, you know, I'm going to bring, I'm going to bring in one other thing here.

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So, you know, some of you guys are going to hate me a bit,

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but I look at my closest friends absolute just top performers, great individuals.

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The parents was infidelity, physical abuse,

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mental abuse, other types of abuse, unfortunately.

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The amount of divorce is like near 100%.

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With that being said, again, all great individuals, but their perception of the future, including myself, I have great parents,

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but I have to say the majority of my childhood was consumed by divorce.

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Our collective thoughts about the future is we are

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so concerned about what direction it is that we're heading

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because we have seen it through our parents

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that we feel like we have to provide as much stability as we possibly can.

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What I'm ultimately saying is that when I used to work at a bank from 18 to 22 or whatever it was,

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24, I guess, I would see individuals that were the parents of my friends and other individuals I went to school with, they would come in.

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I would see that they were cheating on their husband or their wife.

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I would see that they were lying about credit card debt, that they had extra lines of credit on their home equity lines of credit, that they were drowning in debt,

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that they had liquidated their 401ks because of gambling issues.

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I think it's just, I'm ultimately trying to say

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that I'm shocked how a lot of these individuals saying you're selfish for not having kids weren't great role models.

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And I'm sorry to say that.

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That isn't a great thing.

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And a lot of you are fantastic parents.

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But man, the amount of comments I've got that have said my parents beat me and all of these other things,

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it hasn't necessarily been the best environment to foster the desire to want to have kids when things are so difficult.

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And I don't think anybody else is saying that.

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Again, I had fantastic parents.

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And I think what you want for every generation is to

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want to give the next generation a better life than what you had.

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So what I see is, man, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure

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that I have some financial stability to be there when my kid is young, to be able to help them out a little bit,

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to make sure that I don't have to do some of these other things, to just be more present, to offer a little bit of stability for them, and to make sure that I am rock steady with my partner.

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I just think that we're shying away from the important conversations

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and I'm going to say it because some of you might be

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questioning everything that I'm saying is

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that I want to have kids I've said it many times in my videos the only thing that I really want,

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my main goal is to be a father it has been the driving force of everything that I've done

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I've worked at least two jobs, the majority three jobs since I was 18 and it was solely because I wanted to create a stability some sort of,

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I wanted to create a foundation to be able to be a father at some point.

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I'm now working 60, 65 hours a week on this channel, trying to do everything I can to make whatever change I can,

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because at some point I know I'm going to try to be a dad.

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And when that happens, I won't be able to balance both.

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I won't be able to be somebody that is really trying to make a difference and to be a real present father.

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And to me, being a present father is important, but I have to do this other thing first.

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And if you want to call that selfishness, which I've actually been called selfish.

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I don't know.

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I think that you might need to get your priorities set.

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So again, I'm doing everything that I can and I'm really doing my best to provide stability, but it's a very difficult time to do so.

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And we start, we have to start having these conversations.

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And, you know, I know a lot of you out there aren't maybe, you know, thinking, oh yeah, you're selfish for not having kids.

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But man, that is a prevailing thought process out there.

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And I almost just want to offer like a rebuttal back of, then why did you make it seem like it was so damaging to your life being a parent?

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Again, this isn't directed towards my parents, but man, that is something I've seen a lot of.

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And it's really frustrating.

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I wish that I could have talked about other things in this video.

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I feel like I'm having to do so much damage control of societal narratives because we're just not having the right conversation.

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I don't know.

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It feels like that's what this is all designed for.

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It's not to actually address anything, not to pursue any way forward.

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It's just to keep wasting our time.

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So I don't know.

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I think it's really frustrating.

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But again, I hope this was able to provide some value.

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I just really want to see us go in a better direction.

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I want to, I want, I'm actively trying to plant the seeds so my kids

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and my grandkids and my great grandkids can benefit the shade from the tree.

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And previous generations, why didn't you do that?

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Why are you so focused on my selfishness that you didn't plant more trees?

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I think we got to start asking that question.

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But anyway, I hope this was able to provide some value to you.

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Thank you all so much for your support.

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Make sure you hit the like and the subscribe.

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It greatly helps me be able to get the message out there to the people that want to see this.

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I'm actively trying to make a change and I'm doing my best.

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I'm doing the best that I can to be able to make sure that that happens.

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Anyway, until next time.

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Bye-bye.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Gen Z GAVE UP Having Kids”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Gen, generation, economic, rate. This video has 221 sentences and 3609 words to shadow. The speech runs for 21:10. The speaker talks at a natural 170 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
selfishness noun	/ˈsɛl.fɪʃ.nəs/	The quality of being selfish, the condition of putting one's own interests before those of others.
selfish adjective	/ˈsɛlf.ɪʃ/	Holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision making.
collapse verb	/kəˈlæps/	To break apart and fall down suddenly; to cave in.
prioritize verb	/pɹaɪˈɒɹ.ə.taɪz/	To value, do, or choose something first, or before other things.
societal adjective	[səˈsaɪ.ɪ.tɫ̩]	Of or pertaining to society or social groups, or to their activities, customs, etc.
optimism noun	/ˈɑptɪmɪzəm/	a tendency to expect the best, or at least, a favourable outcome
fertility noun	/fɝˈtɪləti/	The condition, or the degree, of being fertile.
predominantly adverb	/pɹɪˈdɒmɪnəntli/	In a predominant manner. Most commonly or frequently by a large margin.
financially adverb		In terms of finance or money.
childcare noun		The act, practice, or occupation of supervising and taking care of young children.
disillusionment noun	/ˌdɪsɪˈluːʒənmənt/	A feeling of disappointment, akin to depression, arising from the realization that something is not what it was expected or believed to be, possibly…
frustrate verb	/ˈfɹʌsˌtɹeɪt/	To disappoint or defeat; to vex by depriving of something expected or desired.
grandkid noun	/ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌkɪd/	A grandchild.
laziness noun	/ˈleɪ.zi.nəs/	The quality of being lazy
hardship noun	/ˈhɑɹdˌʃɪp/	Difficulty or trouble; hard times.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
build up verb		To erect; to construct.
cover up verb		To conceal or disguise.
go ahead verb	/ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/	To proceed with; to begin.
go out verb		To leave, especially a building.
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.
have over verb		To host (a visiting guest) at one's house.
pay off verb		To bribe, especially to deter oversight.
sit around verb		To spend time sitting idly, not doing anything important.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

It's just to keep wasting our time.
I think it's really frustrating.
And previous generations, why didn't you do that?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have now fallen · has been given · have led
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	has been given · were not viewed · was also replicated

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 65 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: selfishness /ˈsɛl.fɪʃ.nəs/, selfish /ˈsɛlf.ɪʃ/, disillusionment /ˌdɪsɪˈluːʒənmənt/, hardship /ˈhɑɹdˌʃɪp/, traditionally /tɹəˈdɪʃ.ə.nə.li/
Long words — get the stress right: prioritize /pɹaɪˈɒɹ.ə.taɪz/, optimism /ˈɑptɪmɪzəm/, fertility /fɝˈtɪləti/, predominantly /pɹɪˈdɒmɪnəntli/, disillusionment /ˌdɪsɪˈluːʒənmənt/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like selfishness, selfish, collapse.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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